Voices of Hate, Sounds of Hybridity: Black Music and the Complexities of Racism

Abstract

It is worth stating obvious. The music of African diaspora is not a recent import to Europe; rather, it has been an integral part of numerous European societies since eighteenth century. In England, these sounds were introduced through hands and voices of slave musicians, jubilee singers, jazz orchestras, reggae sound-system operators, and hip-hop DJs. It is--or should be--impossible to think about social history of Europe in general, or England in particular, without understanding place of black music within it. In Victorian England, sounds of jubilees and were assimilated across lines of class and political division. Karl Marx, who lived in London for over thirty years, would render German folk-songs and Negro spirituals while walking with his daughters in Highgate (Wheen 1999, 221). The Fisk Jubilee Singers enjoyed adulation from aristocrats and paupers alike. They entertained Queen Victoria and Prime Minister William Gladstone (Gilroy 1993, 90), and their memoir recounts a particularly eventful concert introduced by Earl of Shaftesbury at annual meeting of Freedmen's Mission Aid society, City Temple, London, on May 31, 1875: So great was gathering about building that to get even to doors was a formidable task, and chairman, Lord Shaftesbury, was delayed some minutes in reaching platform by difficulty of penetrating dense crowd that filled corridors. In ascending stand his eye caught sight of singers in gallery, whom he greeted with a cordial salutation, and in his remarks on taking chair he said: am delighted to see so large a congregation of citizens of London come to offer a renewal of their hospitality to these noble brethren and sisters of ours, who are here to-night to charm us with their sweet songs. They have returned here, not for anything in their own behalf, but to advance interests of coloured race in America, and then to what in them lies to send missionaries of their own colour to nations spread over Africa. When I find these young people, gifted to an extent that does not often fall to lot of man, coming here in such a spirit. I don't want them to become white, but I have a strong disposition myself to become black. If I thought colour was anything--if it brought with it their truth, piety, and talent, I would willingly exchange my complexion to-morrow. (Marsh 1900, 79-80). It is strange, a century later, to read that sounds of black gospel moved this peer of realm to indulge in a fantasy of self-transformation. Doug Seroff has documented a parallel story of infatuation with gospel singing at other end of social scale. He points out that another legacy of Fisk visit was formation of groups of white working-class jubilee singers. One such choir was formed in Hackney, in east London. Thirty young singers from local Ragged School toured London, raising money for Hackney Mission, in 1875--the same year that Earl of Shaftesbury introduced Fisk Singers on London stage (Seroff 1986, 48). Although Marx may have cheerfully lent his voice to spiritual melodies, reaction by twentieth-century European Marxists to black music was often less than positive. Theodor Adorno's criticism is perhaps best known, particularly for his denunciation of jazz and recorded music. Adorno's argument is easily misrepresented, in large part due to his own rhetorical excesses (for example, in one article entitled Uber Jazz, he wrote that jazz most closely resembled the spontaneous singing of servant girls [Adorno 1990, 53]). His objection is sometimes characterized as rooted in a racially loaded form of European aesthetics, but such attempts to read his position through some kind of implicit racial bad sense risk missing an important nuance in his argument. …